Some Girls Do Read Free Page A

erotic adventures of her alter ego. It was a quiet, almost nun-like existence for a girl of her age, and from time to time she worried that she was becoming a freakish loner. Even her mother occasionally suggested that she should be out enjoying herself with people her own age, meeting men, falling in love and having adventures. But Claire had never been the type for adventures. She hated nightclubs and was content to spend quiet nights in reading, chatting to her online friends or watching television with her mother. Besides, her dismal social life gave her more time to devote to writing and blogging. Sometimes when she thought about the future, she feared that life had left her behind and she would never catch up. The idea scared her, but she tried not to dwell on it too much, and mostly she was happy with things as they were.
    But it was very different from the life she had envisaged for herself – a life that had seemed to be rolling out in front of her just three years earlier. After studying English literature, followed by an MA in creative writing, she had been planning to move to London and get an entry-level job in publishing. She had been looking forward to finding work and a boyfriend, starting a career … and then she had got the call that changed everything. Her heart still leapt into her mouth whenever she remembered the night Ronan had rung to tell her their mother had been rushed to hospital with heart failure. Claire had dashed home, not knowing what she would find. Espie had pulled through, but tests revealed a heart condition that needed constant monitoringand care. Despite her mother’s protests that she was fine living alone, Claire would never have felt easy about it and, besides, she wanted to be on hand in case her mother had another crisis.
    At first she had tried to find a job in publishing, but if they were hard to come by in London, they were even scarcer in Dublin. So, determined to make the most of her circumstances, she had decided to shelve the idea for a while, get a relatively undemanding job, and concentrate instead on her writing. All her life, she had dreamed of being a writer, so it looked like a satisfactory Plan B. She had taken the job at Bookends, intending to devote all her free time to her novel.
    It hadn’t worked out like that, though. Between her job and her mother, she had found she didn’t have as much time to herself as she’d hoped, and progress on the novel had been slow and patchy. Then, a couple of years ago, she had written an erotic piece as an exercise for a creative writing class. She had enjoyed it so much that she had set up a blog to practise sustaining a voice convincingly – as well as to give herself an outlet for her creativity that didn’t demand as much of her time.
    She hadn’t expected it to be so successful, but the feedback had been gratifyingly enthusiastic from the start and spurred her on to continue. Now it was one of the most widely read and popular sex blogs on the net. It was fun to write, and its success was a great source of pride and satisfaction. She loved getting an instant response to something she had written, and the way her followers engaged with her was a tribute to how completely she had been able to inhabit her character, the anonymous NiceGirl. Her ‘About Me’ set out her mission statement:
    I’m not a slut or a skank, just a nice girl who likes sex. Because nice girls do.
    NiceGirl had her own Twitter and Facebook accounts, with thousands of friends and followers. Claire often wondered what they would think if they discovered the reality – a twenty-eight-year-oldwoman who lived at home with her mother and had had sex only a few times in her life. Even then she hadn’t been sure what she was doing.
    They would probably think she had all the hallmarks of a serial killer, she thought wryly, as she settled on the sofa with a glass of wine and opened up her laptop. There was a long, newsy email from Lisa, who was having a